XXXII. The mind, then, which is devoted to pleasure, having entertained these hopes, does not think that it is suffi- cient to attract the younger men, and those who are as yet only attending the schools of temperance, by its allurements; bnt it looks upon it as a terrible thing, if it cannot also bring over the elder reasoning, the more impetuous passions of which have now passed their prime; for in a subsequent passage Joseph says to them, proposing injuries to them as though they were benefits, " Now, therefore, bringing with you your father and all your possessions, come hither to me;"* speaking in this way of Egypt and of that terrible king who drags back all our paternal inheritance and the good things which really belong to us and which have advanced beyond the body (for by nature they are free), endeavouring by force to surrender them to a very bitter prison, having, as the holy scripture tells us, " appointed as guardian of the prison Pentaphres, the eunuch and chief cook,"f who was a man in great want of all that is good, and who had been deprived of the generative parts of the soul; and who was also unable to sow and to plant any of those things which bear upon instruction; but who like a cook slew the living animals, and cut them up and divided them in different portions limb by limb, and who wallowed about in dead and lifeless bodies and things equally, and who, by his superfluous preparations and refinements, excited and stirred up the appetites of the profitless passions, which it was natural to expect that those who were able to tame them should mollify. And he also says, <; I will give unto you of all the good things of Egypt, and you shall eat of the marrow of the earth." J But we will say unto him, We who keep our eyes fixed on the good things of the soul do not desire those of the body. For that most delicious desire of the former things, when once implanted in the mind, is well calculated to engender a forget- fulness of all those things which are dear to the flesh XXXIII. Something like this, then, is the falsely named joy of the foolish. But the true joy has already been described, which is adapted only to the virtuous, " Therefore, falling ■ Genesis xlv. 18. f Genesis xxxix. 1. £ Genesis xlv. 18.
ON THE CHANGE OF SCRIPTURE NAMES. 273 down, he laughed."* Not falling from God, but from himself; for he stood near the unchangeable God, but he fell from his own vain opinion. On which account that pride which was wise in its own conceit, having been thrown down, and the feeling which is devoted to God having been raised in its place, and being established around the only unalterable being, he, imme- diately laughing, said in his mind, " Shall a child be born to one who is a hundred years old, and shall Sarrah, who is ninety years old, have a child?" Do not fancy, my good friend, that that word, " he said" not with his mouth but " in his niind,"t has been added for no especial use; on the contrary, it is inserted with great accuracy and propriety. Why so? Because it seems by his saying, " Shall a child be born to him who is a hundred years old?" that he had a doubt about the birth of Isaac, in which he was previously stated to believe; as what was predicted a little before showed, speaking thus, " This child shall not be thy heir, but he who shall come out of thee;" and immediately afterward he says, "Abraham believed in the Lord, and it was counted to him for right- eousness."
Since then it was not consistent for one who had already believed to doubt, he has represented the doubt as of no long continuance, extending only as far as the mouth and the tongue, and stopping there at the mind which is endowed with such celerity of motion; for,, says the scripture, " he said in his mind," which nothing, and no person ever so celebrated for swiftness of foot, could ever be able to outstrip, since it out- runs even all the winged natures; on which account the most illustrious of all the Greek poets appears to me to have said: — " Swift as a winged bird or fleeter thought." J Showing by these words the exceeding speed of its promptitude, placing the thought after the winged bird as a sort of climax; for the mind advances at, the same moment to very mauy things and bodies, hurrying on with indescribable impetuosity, and without a moment's lapse of time it speeds at once to the borders of both earth and sea, bringing together and dividing infinite magnitudes by a single word; and at the same time it soars to such a height above the earth, that it penetrates * Genesis xvii. 17. f Genesis xvii. 20.
X Homer. Odyssey viii. 171. VOL. II. T 271 PHILO JUD^EUS.
through the air and reaches e\en the aether, and scarcely stops at the very furthest circle of the fixed stars.
For the fervid and glowing heat of that region does not suffer it to rest tranquil; on which account, overleaping many things, it is borne far beyond every boundary perceptible by the outward senses, to that which is compounded of ideas and appearances by the law of kindred. On which account in the good man there is a slight change, indivisible, unapportionable, not perceptible by the outward senses, but only by the intellect, and being in a manner independent of them.
XXXIV. But, perhaps, some one may say, What then? is he ■who has once believed bound never to admit the slightest trace, or shadow, or moment of incredulity at all? But this man appears to me to have nothing else in his mind except an idea of proving the creature uncreated, and the mortal immor- tal, and the corruptible incorruptible, and man, if it be lawful to say so, God. For he says that the belief which man has once conceived ought to be so firm as in no respect to differ from that which is entertained of the truly living God and which is complete in every part; for Moses, in his greater hymn, says, " God is faithful, and there is no unrighteousness in him."# And it is great folly to fancy that the soul of man is able to contain the virtues of God, which never vary and which are established on the most solid footing; for it is sufficient, and one must be content to have been able to acquire the images of them, though they are inferior to the archetypal patterns by many and large numbers. And is not this reason- able? for it follows of necessity that the virtues of God must be pure and unmixed, since God is not a compound being, inasmuch as he is a single nature; on the other hand, the virtues of men must be mixed with some alloy, since we our- selves are compounds, the divine and human nature being combined in us, and adapted together according to the princi- ples of perfect music; and that which is composed of many separate things has a natural attraction to each of its parts. But he is happy to whom it has happened that for the greater portion of his life he has inclined towards the more excellent and more divine part; for that he should have done so all his life is impossible, since at times the mortal weight which i opposed to him has preponderated in the opposite scale, and * Deuteronomy xxxii. 4.
ON THE CHANGE OF SCRIPTURE NAMES. 275 impending over his mind, has kept watch for the opportunities' of coming upon his reason at an unfavourable time, so as to drag it back again.
XXXV. Abraham therefore believed in God; but lie believed as a man; that you may be aware of the peculiar attribute of mortals, and may learn that his fall did not happen to him in any other way than in consequence of the ordinances of nature. And if it was of short duration and only momentary, it is a thing to be thankful for: for many other men have been so overturned by the violence and impe- tuosity of error, and by its irresistible force, that they have been utterly destroyed for ever. For know, my good man, that, according to the most holy Moses, virtue is not perfect in the human body, but it suffers something like torpor, and is often ever so little lame. For says the scripture, " The broader part of his thigh became torpid, on which he was lame."* And perhaps some man of an over-confident disposition may come forward and say that this is not the language of one who dis- believes, but of one praying, so that if that most excellent of all the happy feelings were about to be produced, it would not be brought forth according to any other number than that of ninety years, that so the perfect good might arrive at its pro- duction according to perfect numbers.
But the aforesaid numbers are perfect, and especially ac- cording to the sacred scriptures. And let us consider each of them: now first of all there is the son of the just Noah and the ancestor of the seeing race, and he is said to have been a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad,f and the meaning of the name Arphaxad is, "he disturbed sorrow." At all events it is a good thing that the offspring of the soul should confuse, and disorder, and destroy that miserable thing iniquity, so full of evils.
But Abraham also planted a field, X using the ratio of an hundred for the measurement of the ground: and Isaac found e barley yielding a hundred fold.§ And Moses also made the vestibule of the sacred tabernacle in a hundred arches,|| suring out the distance towards the east and towards the Moreover the ratio of a hundred is the first fruit of * Genesis xxxii. 25. + Genesis xi. 10.
Exodus xxvii. 9.
the first fruit which the Levites assign to those who are conse- crated to the priesthood; * for after they have taken the tenths from the nation they are enjoined to give unto the priests a sacred tenth of the whole share, as if from their own possessions. And if a person were to consider, he might find many other instances to the praise of the aforesaid number brought forward in the law of Moses, but for the present what have been enumerated are sufficient. But if from the hundred you set aside the tenth part as a sacred first fruit to God who produces, and increases, and brings to perfection the fruit of the soul — for how can it be anything but perfcet, inasmuch as it is on the confines between the first and the tenth, in the same manner in which the Holy of Holies is separated by the veil in the middle..t by which those things which are of the same genus are divided according to the differences in species?
XXXVI. Therefore the good man was speaking and saying things which were really good in his mind. But the bad man at times interprets good things in a very excellent manner, but nevertheless does shameful things in a most shameful one, a.s Shechem does who is the offspring of folly. For he is the son of Hamon his father, and the name Hamon, being trranslated. means " an ass," but the name Shechem means " a shoulder" when interpreted, the symbol of labour. But that labour of which folly is the parent is "miserable and full of suffering, as, on the other hand, that labour is useful to which prudence is related. Accordingly the holy scriptures tell us that, " Shechem spake according to the mind of the virgin, having first humbled her."{ Is it not said then, with great purpose and accuracy, that he spake according to the mind of the dam- sel, for the purpose of showing distinctly that he acted in a contrary manner to that in which he spoke? For Dinah means incorruptible judgment: justice the attribute seated by God, the everlasting virgin; for the name Dinah, being interpreted, means either thing, judgment or -justice.
Fools, then, laying violent hands upon and attempting to defile her, by means of their daily designs and practices, by their plausibility of speech escape conviction. Therefore * Numbers xviii 28. f There is a hiatus iu the text here.
J Genesis xxxiv. 3.
ON THE CHANGE OF SCRIPTURE NAMES.
/7 they must either act in a manner consistent with the lan- guage that they hold, or else they must hold their tongues while committing iniquity. For it is said, " Silence is one half of evil:" as Moses says when rebuking the man who accounted the creature worthy of the principal honour, and the immortal God worthy only of the second place, " Thou hast sinned, be silent." For to use bombastic language, and to boast of one's evil deeds, is a double sin: and men in general are very prone to this; for they are constantly saying what is pleasing to the ever-virgin virtue, and such things as are just: but they never omit any opportunity of insulting and violating her when they are able.
For what city is there which is not full of those who are continually celebrating the praises of virtue? — men who weary the ears of those who hear them by everlastingly dwelling on such subjects as these; wisdom is a necessary good; folly is pernicious; temperance is desirable; intemperance is hateful; courage is a thing proper to be cultivated; cowardice must be avoided; justice is advantageous; injustice is disadvantageous; holiness is honourable; unholiness is shameful; piety towards the gods is praiseworthy; impiety is blameable; that which is most akin to the nature of man is to design, and to act, and to speak virtuously; that which is most alien from his nature is to do the contrary of all these things.
By continually stringing together these and similar aphorisms they deceive the courts of justice, and the council cham- bers, and the theatres, and every assembly and company which they meet; as men who put beautiful masks on ugly faces, with the intention of not being discovered by those who see them. But it is of no use; for some persons will come endowed with great vigour, and occupied with a real zeal and admiration for virtue, and who will strip them of all their coverings, and disguises, and appendages which they had woven round themselves by the evil artifice of plausible speeches, "and will display their soul naked by itself as it really is, and will make themselves acquainted with the secret things of their nature which are hidden as it were in recesses. And then having brought to light all its shame and all the reproaches to which it is liable, they will display them in broad daylight to every one, and show what sort of thing it is, how disgraceful and ridiculous, and what a spurious kind of 27 S PHILO JUD.EUS.
beauty it has disguised itself with by means of its appendages and coverings.
And those who are prepared to avenge themselves on such profane and impure dispositions are Simeon and Levi,* two indeed in number, but only one in mind; on which account, in his blessings of his sons, their father numbers them together under one classification, on account of the harmonious charac- ter of their unanimity and of their violence in one and the same direction. But Moses does not make any mention of them afterwards as a pair, but classes the whole tribe of Simeon under that of Levi, combining together two essences, of which he made one impressed as it were with one idea and appear- ance, uniting hearing to doing.
XXXVII. When, therefore, the virtuous man knew that the promise was uttering things full of reverence and prudent caution, according to his own mind, he admitted both these feelings into his breast, namely, faith in God, and incredulity as to the creature. Very naturally therefore he says, using the language of entreaty, " Would that this Ishmael might live before thee,"f using each word of those which he utters here with deliberate propriety, namely, the " this," the " might live," the " before thee." For it is no small number of per- sons who have been deceived by the similarity of the names of different things, and we had better examine here what I am saying.
The name Ishmael, being interpreted, means " the hearing of God," but some men listen to the divine doctrines to their benefit, and others listen to both his admonitions and to those of others only to their destruction. Do you not recollect the case of the soothsayer Balaam?$ He is represented as hear- ing the oracles of God, and as having received knowledge from the Most High, but what advantage did he reap from such hearing, and what good accrued to him from such knowledge? In his intention he endeavoured to injure the most excellent eye of the soul, which alone has received such instruction as be able to behold God, but he was unable to do so by reason of the invincible power of the Saviour; therefore, being over- thrown by his own insane wickedness, and having received many wounds, he perished amid the heaps of wounded, § be- * Deuteronomy xxxiii. G. + Genesis xvii. 18.
X Numbers xxiv. 17. § Numbers xxxi 8.
ON THE CHANGE OF SCRIPTURE NAME-*. 270 cruise he had stamped beforehand the divinely inspired pro- phecies with the sophistry of the soothsayers.
Very righteously, therefore, does the good man pray that this his only son, Ishmael, may be sound in mind and health, because of those persons who do not listen in a sincere spirit to the sacred admonitions, whom Moses has expressly forbidden to come into the assembly of the Ruler of the universe, for those men are broken as to the generative parts of their minds, or are even rendered completely impotent in that respect, who magnify their own minds, and their external sense, as the only causes of all the events which take place among men; and there are others who are lovers of a system of polytheism, and who honour the company which is devoted to the service of many gods, being the sons of a harlot, having no knowledge of the one husband and father of the virtue- loving soul, namely, God; and are not all these men very pro- perly driven away and banished from the assembly of God? They appear to me very much to resemble those parents who accuse their sons of intemperance in wine, for they say, " This our son is disobedient,"* indicating, by the addition of the word " this," that they have other sons likewise who are temperate and self-denying, and who obey the injunctions of right reason and instruction; for these are the most genuine parents, by whom it is a most disgraceful thing to be accused, and a most glorious thing to be praised.
Then as to the words, " This is Aaron and Moses, whom God directed to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, "f and the expression, " These are they who conversed with Pharaoh the king." Let us not think that they are used su- perfluously, or that they do not convey some intimations beyond the mere open meaning of the words; for since Moses Lb the purest mind, and Aaron is his speech, and moreover, since the mind has been taught to think of divine things in a divine manner, and since the speech has learnt to interpret holy things in holy language, the sophists imitating them, and adulterating the genuine coinage, say, that they also conceive rightly, and speak in a praiseworthy manner about what is most excellent.
In order, therefore, that we may not be deceived by a plaeing of the base money in juxtaposition with the good, by reason of * Deuteronomy xxi. 20. *r Exodus vi. 26.
280 piiilo judjEUS.
the similitude of the impression, he has given us a test by which they may be distinguished. What then is the t< bring out of the region of the body the mind, endowed with the power of seeing, fond of contemplation and philosophical; for he who can do this is this same Moses; and he who is un- able really to do so, but who is only said to be able, and who makes professions wTith infinite pomp and magnitude of lan- guage, is laughed at.
But he prays that Ishmael may live, not meaning to refer to the life in conjunction with the body, but he prays that the divine voice, dwelling for evermore in his soul, may awaken and vivify it.
XXXVIII. And he indeed prays that the hearing of sacred words and tbe learning of sacred doctrine may live, as has been already said; but Jacob, the practiser of virtue, prays that the good natural disposition may live; for he says, " May Reuben live and not die,"* does he then here pray for immor- tality for him, a thing impossible for man to attain to? Surely not, we must then explain what it is which he intends to signify. All the lessons and all the admonitions of in- struction are built up and established on the nature which is calculated to receive instruction, as on a foundation previously laid; but if there is no natural foundation previously in existence, everything is useless; for men, by nature destitute of sense, would not appear at all to differ from a stock or a lifeless stone; for nothing could possibly be adapted to them so as to cleave to them, but everything would rebound and spring back as from some hard body.
But on the other hand, we may see the souls of those who are well endowed by nature, like a well-smoothed waxen tablet, neither too solid nor too tender, moderately tempered, and easily receiving all admonitions and all lessons, and themselves giving an accurate representation of any impression which has been stamped upon them, being a sort of distinct image of memory.
It was therefore indispensable to pray that a good natural disposition, free from all disease and from all mortality, should be joined to the rational race; for they are but few who partake of the life according to virtue, which is the most real and genuine life. I do not mean of the common herd of men * Deuteronomy xxxiii. 6.
ON THE CHANGE OF SCRIPTURE NAMES. 281 only, for of them there is not one who partakes of real life: but even of those to whom it has been granted to shun the objects of human desire, and to live to God alone. On which account the practiser of virtue, that courageous man, marvelled greatly, if any one being borne along the middle of the stream of life, was not dragged down by any violence, but was able to withstand the flow of abundant wealth coming over him, and to stem the impetuosity of immoderate pleasure, and to avoid being carried away by the whirlwind of vain opinion.
At all events Jacob does not speak to Joseph more than the sacred scripture speaks to every one who is vigorous in his body, and who is seen to be immersed amid abundant treasures, and riches, and superfluities, and to be overcome by none of them, when he says, " For still thou livest," uttering a most marvellous sentiment, and one which is quite beyond the daily life of us who, if we have fallen in with ever so slight a breeze which bears us towards good fortune, immediately set all sail and become greatly elated, and being full of great and high spirits, hurry forward with all our speed to the indulgence of our passions, and never will check our unbridled and immo- derately excited desires until we run ashore and are wrecked as to the whole vessel of our souls.
XXXIX. Very beautifully therefore, do we pray that this Ishmael may live. Therefore, Abraham adds, " May he live before God," looking upon it as the perfection of all happiness for the mind to be accounted worthy of him who is the most excellent of all beings, as its inspector and overseer; for if, while the teacher is present the pupil cannot go wrong, and if a monitor being at hand is of service to the learner, and if while an elder person is present the younger man is adorned by modesty and temperance, and if the presence of his father or of his mother have often prevented a son when about to commit sin, even though they are only beheld by him in silence, then what excess of good must we imagine that man to enjoy, who believes that he is always watched and beheld by God '? for while he fears and reverences and looks up to the dignity of him as being present, he will flee from committing iniquity with all his might.
JUit when he prays that Ishmael may live, he does not despair of the birth of Isaac, as I have already said, but he believes in God; for it does not follow that what it is possible * Genesis xlv. 28.
282 PHILO JUD/EUS.
for God to give, it is also possible for man to receive, since ti> God it is easy to give the most numerous and important benefits, but to us it is not easy to accept of the gifts which are proffered to us; for we must he content, if, by means of labour and diligence, we obtain a share of those good tilings which are familiar and customary to us. But there is no hope that we can attain to those which come of their own accord, and from some ever ready and previously prepared source, without any art, or in short, any human contrivance whatever; for inasmuch as these things are divine, they must of neces- sity be found out by more divine and unadulterated natures, such as have no connection with any mortal body. And Moses has shown that every one, to the best of his power, ought to make grateful acknowledgments for benefits received; for instance, that the clever man ought to offer up as a sacrifice his acuteness and wisdom; the eloquent man should consecrate all his excellences of speech, by means of psalms and a regular enumeration of the greatness and panegyric on the living God; and to proceed with each species, he who is a natural philoso- pher should offer up his natural philosophy; he who is a moral philosopher should make an offering of his ethical philosophy; he who is skilful in any art or science should dedicate to God his knowledge of the arts and sciences.